Constructor: Lucy Howard and Ross Trudeau
Relative difficulty: Easy (8:47)
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THEME:"Sugar, Sugar"— wacky phrases made out of candy names:
Theme answers:
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Tame wacky is always so depressing. There are no laughs here, and not much in the way of real cleverness. There's a core idea—a theme type I've seen before ... I'd be stunned if I hadn't seen this exact theme at some point in my life. But once you piece the first themer together, once you grasp the concept, solving mainly just involves thinking of candy names. The particular humor of the clue doesn't matter much, and in most cases isn't really there. Remember some candies! That's all you do here. Except for FANTASY SERIES (which felt new / interesting) the fill doesn't do much that's interesting either. This is placeholder stuff; just absolutely typical, run-of-the-mill, utterly characteristic late 20th-century NYTXW fare. It clears the bar. It's passable. But it's not innovative, and it doesn't even offer much of a new or vibrant take on an old concept. It's just there. It's fine. It'll pass the time for 15 minutes or a half hour or an hour or whatever. Ho + hum. Still not sure how the marquee puzzle remains this tepid, week in and week out. ![]()
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Relative difficulty: Easy (8:47)
Theme answers:
- NERDS RING POP (22A: Bookworms call dad?)
- BABY RUTH SNICKERS (31A: A young Justice Ginsburg chuckles?)
- CRUNCH NOW AND LATER (47A: Do core exercises all day, every day?)
- WHOPPERS SPREE (67A: Burger King bingefest?)
- MILKY WAY STARBURST (84A: Supernova in our galaxy?)
- LIFESAVERS PAYDAY (103A: When E.M.T.s bring home the bacon?)
- MARS SMARTIES (115A: Some astronomy PhD.s?)
Toni Watson, known professionally as Tones and I, is an Australian singer and songwriter. Her breakout single, "Dance Monkey", was released in May 2019 and reached number one in over 30 countries.
In 2019, she broke the Australian record for the most weeks at number one on the ARIA Singles Chart by any artist with 16 weeks. By mid-January 2020, "Dance Monkey" had spent its 24th and final week at number one, beating Bing Crosby's all-time Australian record for his version of "White Christmas", which spent 22 weeks (five months, namely June to October) at the top spot in 1943.
"Dance Monkey" was accredited 13× platinum by ARIA for shipments of over 910,000 units, in October 2020. Tones was the most awarded artist at the ARIA Music Awards of 2019, winning four from eight nominations. Tones and I released her debut extended play, The Kids Are Coming, on 30 August 2019, which peaked at number three in Australia, and top 10 in several countries. (wikipedia)
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The image of a snickering baby Ruth Ginsburg is probably the highlight of the puzzle, in that it's bizarre, and therefore offers a memorable image. something to sear your brain. Everything else is so milquetoast. Wacky puzzles have to get weird, or else they get very tedious (polite smile-quaint) very quickly. NERDS calling their dad, also on the better side of this theme set. But the rest are forgettable. They don't even seem to be really trying. Smaller nit—I don't think "now and later" means "all day, every day." If I do something now and later, then I do it at two discrete times, with a gap in between. The clue is incorrect on a literal level (never a good thing). I did blow through the puzzle pretty quickly, which is always a nice feeling. As usual, the struggles came in the first half of the solve, and the second half was a sprint by comparison (if you watch the solving video I made for yesterday's puzzle, you can see this phenomenon happen quite clearly—2/3 of the time to solve the first half, and 1/3 to solve the last; night and day).
The NW of course tripped me up a bit. I always start there, and since you start with nothing, that's when you're likeliest to go wrong. Small wrong was ONS for INS (5D: Walk-___). Bigger wrong was PACK UP for TANK UP (not a phrase I heard growing up, and I grew up in car country, i.e. California). Had NEMEANS (!?!?) before NUBIANS, so that slowed things down a bit (also no idea about TONI, who isn't even known by her real name, so ????). The slowest part by far, though, was the NE. Fill-in-the-blank clue (BRAIN) and BMW and WMD all eluded me (wanted a 3-letter version of ICBM, or maybe IED, for that last one) (I never think of WMD as real ... the only time I've ever heard it used is in Bush-era war propaganda) (14D: Subject of intl. treaties). Wanted NGO instead of the mere ORG. at 15A: Doctors Without Borders, e.g.: Abbr.). Haven't played Stratego since I was maybe 14, so SPY was meaningless to me (in general, I find puzzles overestimate how common board game knowledge is ... which reminds me ... maybe I've seen this puzzle type done with board games before? Cereal brands? I know I've seen it ... movie titles, maybe? The whole "making wacky phrases out of names from some category" is definitely a thing). I don't think of what a pen does to your shirt pocket as a mere INK MARK (wanted BLOT or something equally evocative of mess). So I fumbled a bunch up there. But after I escaped, whoosh. No trouble except for the SERIES part of FANTASY SERIES (after I couldn't get NOVEL to fit, I was stuck until crosses came to the rescue). Now I have an urge to reread the "Earthsea" series. If a puzzle inspires you to read Ursula K. LeGuin, it can't be all bad.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. LAST CHANCE: Boswords is gearing up for another online crossword tournament in the very near future. Here's the blurb from co-organizer, John Lieb:
Registration is now open for the Boswords 2021 Winter Wondersolve, an online crossword tournament, which will be held on Sunday, January 31 from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Solvers can compete individually or in pairs and will complete four puzzles (three themed and one themeless) edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to see the constructors, and for more details, go to www.boswords.org.Many of my readers and friends really enjoyed the last one of these, so even if you've never competed in a crossword tourney before, you should consider it. ("Competition" isn't really the point)
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